It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Harpers Crimilization of Canadians Is A Bad Investment

The Harpocrites right wing law and order agenda, though as la scandale Bev Oda shows the government itself is not above breaking the law, is typical right wing sturm and drang signifying nothing except a growth in the institutional prison industry.

The Harper Conservatives are under fire for their extraordinarily expensive legislative initiative, Bill S-10. Among other things, it seeks to spend at least hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six marijuana plants. Most Canadians, experts and non-experts alike, have criticized the proposal as costly and counter-productive, noting that it will imprison individuals who are mostly non-violent and who sell to willing adult consumers.

The cost is in some dispute. Correctional Services Canada estimates an increase in prisoner numbers of 3,400, requiring 2,700 new spaces, at a cost of $2-billion.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, thinks that lowballs the price tag. His office puts the increase in prisoner numbers at 4,200, at a cost of $1.8-billion for facility construction and an additional $3-billion a year for operations and maintenance. He suggests that by 2015/16, annual prison expenditure will have increased to $9.3-billion from the current $4.3-billion.

As a result the costs incurred will continue to balloon from lowballing by the government. And if the American experience tells us anything as we can see from the report below, the facts are that prison expansion is a drain on the public purse, with no rehabilitative or crime reduction consequences!

But let us not let the facts get in the way of a political ideology. After all these Republican Light Harpocrites are nothing if not panderers to American right wing ideology. An ideology that is the politics of fear.

Reason and the facts once again show that a policy of increasing the length of criminal sentences does nothing except expand the prison population, increasing costs to the public purse.

The growth of the corrections sector has other impacts. A number of rural areas have chosen to tie their economies to prisons, viewing the institutions as recession-proof development engines.Though many local officials cite benefits, broader research suggests that prisons may not generate the nature and scale of benefits municipalities anticipate or may even slow growth in some localities. Record incarceration rates can have longer-term economic impacts by contributing to increased income inequality and more concentrated poverty.Economic Impacts of Prison GrowthSuzanne M. KirchhoffAnalyst in Industrial Organization and BusinessApril 13, 2010Congressional Research Service7-5700www.crs.govR41177